Review
Gretchen McCulloch is a linguist, and this book is an analysis of language in modern, internet-affected times.
Language has evolved over time. ‘Ye Olde English’ from Shakespeare’s days are hard to read, but going back even a few hundred years more you’d find language that’s completely impossible to decipher. Languages evolve over the years, as a result of networks with a mix of strong and weak ties. Strong ties make people talk much the same, and weak ties expose people to a wider variety of language nuances. Twitter and various other online communities are a platform for both types of connections heretofore unseen. And linguistic analysis of the writing online is possible in a scale completely unimaginable to people even 50 years ago.
Much of the content of this book is explicit statements of things I’ve intuitively known. Not to say it’s not important, but my notes here aren’t extensive because this book is aimed more at posterity than current day. I don’t need to note “Turns out that ‘lol’ doesn’t actually mean the sender is laughing out loud!”
in all, there wasn’t a lot to take away from this book. It was aimed at posterity, not me.
Notes
LIST FROM [[#]]